Remarks of Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson

Memorial Day, Gettysburg, Pennsylvania

May 30, 1963

On this hallowed ground, heroic deeds were performed and eloquent words
were spoken a century ago.

We, the living, have not forgotten--and the world will never forget--the
deeds or the words of Gettysburg. We honor them now as we join on this Memorial
Day of 1963 in a prayer for permanent peace of the world and fulfillment of
our hopes for universal freedom and justice.

We are called to honor our own words of reverent prayer with resolution
in the deeds we must perform to preserve peace and the hope of freedom.

We keep a vigil of peace around the world.

Until the world knows no aggressors, until the arms of tyranny have been
laid down, until freedom has risen up in every land, we shall maintain our vigil
to make sure our sons who died on foreign fields shall not have died in vain.

As we maintain the vigil of peace, we must remember that justice is a vigil,
too--a vigil we must keep in our own streets and schools and among the lives
of all our people--so that those who died here on their native soil shall not
have died in vain.

One hundred years ago, the slave was freed.

One hundred years later, the Negro remains in bondage to the color of his
skin.

The Negro today asks justice.

We do not answer him--we do not answer those who lie beneath this soil--when
we reply to the Negro by asking, "Patience."

It is empty to plead that the solution to the dilemmas of the present rests
on the hands of the clock. The solution is in our hands. Unless we are willing
to yield up our destiny of greatness among the civilizations of history, Americans--white
and Negro together--must be about the business of resolving the challenge which
confronts us now.

Our nation found its soul in honor on these fields of Gettysburg one hundred
years ago. We must not lose that soul in dishonor now on the fields of hate.

To ask for patience from the Negro is to ask him to give more of what he
has already given enough. But to fail to ask of him--and of all Americans--perseverance
within the processes of a free and responsible society would be to fail to ask
what the national interest requires of all its citizens.

The law cannot save those who deny it but neither can the law serve any
who do not use it. The history of injustice and inequality is a history of disuse
of the law. Law has not failed--and is not failing. We as a nation have failed
ourselves by not trusting the law and by not using the law to gain sooner the
ends of justice which law alone serves.

If the white over-estimates what he has done for the Negro without the
law, the Negro may under-estimate what he is doing and can do for himself with
the law.

If it is empty to ask Negro or white for patience, it is not empty--it
is merely honest--to ask perseverance. Men may build barricades--and others
may hurl themselves against those barricades--but what would happen at the barricades
would yield no answers. The answers will only be wrought by our perseverance
together. It is deceit to promise more as it would be cowardice to demand less.

In this hour, it is not our respective races which are at stake--it is
our nation. Let those who care for their country come forward, North and South,
white and Negro, to lead the way through this moment of challenge and decision.

The Negro says, "Now." Others say, "Never." The voice of responsible Americans--the
voice of those who died here and the great man who spoke here--their voices
say, "Together." There is no other way.

Until justice is blind to color, until education is unaware of race, until
opportunity is unconcerned with the color of men's skins, emancipation will
be a proclamation but not a fact. To the extent that the proclamation of emancipation
is not fulfilled in fact, to that extent we shall have fallen short of assuring
freedom to the free.